Every owner of a vehicle with a windshield has learned that their vehicle's dashboard will be damaged over time by the sun's rays. In addition, vehicles tend to heat in the summer, not only by the ambient heat, but by the sunlight shining into a windshield, which is generally constructed to be a more acute angle than other windows of a car so as to reduce wind resistance.
The auto industry has developed many ways of attempting to mitigate this damage, including the tinting of vehicle windows, sunshades placed on the windshield while a car is not in use, and even mechanical shades. However, most of these approaches only work on the back window, where mechanical shades are employed on nicer vehicles), or on side windows, where tinting is less regulated.
Many states regulate the allowable tint on a windshield, and the market has not yet seen a vehicle with the roll up screen on a front window, as the front windshield is curved more than the back on most cars, and visibility is necessarily harmed by the semi-opaque screens found on back windshields.
The most common solution used by vehicle owners is an inexpensive sun shield that folds in an accordion style for storage, as described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,652,039 to Richards. These folding sun shields are typically made of a cardboard or other rigid lightweight material, and offered in a few basic sizes, or alternatively, shaped to fit specific vehicles so they more easily are held in place between the crevice created between the windshield and front dash at the bottom, and at the top by a vehicle's rear view mirror and pull-down sun visors. More rarely, this type of sun shield is constructed to roll up for storage.
In recent years, the market has enjoyed the widespread use of collapsible compressible structures in which a spring-effect maintains pressure on the shade to remain open, as disclosed in Zheng's U.S. Pat. No. 4,815,784. These collapsible screens are generally stored by folding them using a precise process as described in Zheng. When folded, these collapsible units must be held in the folded position or they naturally unfold. Many people never able to learn the manually looping technique needed to fold and store these screens in their smaller stored position, but rather simply throw the screen into the vehicle's back seat.
Other inventors have attempted to address this common problem with many approaches, including: a) the retracting sun visor descried in U.S. Pat. No. 7,216,917 by Tadakamalla; b) the dual-pillar assembly of U.S. Pat. No. 9,039,064 in which screens scroll out from the sides of the windshield and are pulled together; c) an automated screen disclosed by Chen in U.S. Pat. No. 9,079,479, in which a suction-cup installed on windshields using a rigid part and a removable flexible section is available by the user; d) magnetically affixing the screen in place by attraction to the vehicle frame, disclosed by Middleton in U.S. Pat. No. 8,556,328; e) screens held in place by an unfolding frame, revealed by Chai in U.S. Pat. No. 6,904,923, Huang in U.S. Pat. No. 6,705,381, and Mitchell in U.S. Pat. No. 6,095,230, among others; and f) an air-actuated curtain in U.S. Pat. No. 5,085,473.
The disclosures of the above-referenced patents are herein incorporated by reference in full to this specification.
While each of the above-referenced patents and approaches have their place, there remains yet a need to have a simple, collapsible screen that may be more compact and simple to use, which this specification intends to disclose.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.